High Ammonia Leachate Is No Match for BiOWiSH^® Aqua

Is it possible for a wastewater treatment plant to take on high ammonia landfill leachate?

A wastewater treatment plant operator in South Korea posed this question. He reached out to his local BiOWiSH partner, Smart Bio Korea (SBK), to get an answer.

  His plant was already treating municipal wastewater, but he wanted to be able to treat leachate from a nearby landfill, too.

Landfill leachate has a number of unique characteristics that make it difficult to treat, and this case was no exception. Along with very high ammonia concentrations, the leachate also had high biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and salinity. The plant manager approached SBK to arrange a trial to determine whether BiOWiSH could help him achieve discharge standards while processing this additional high ammonia leachate.

After a 12-week trial, the results were clear: BiOWiSH^® helped the plant take on high-ammonia leachate. Read the full study here, or the summary below.

BiOWiSH^® Aqua Reduces Nitrogen

Ammonia is a toxic nitrogen compound often found in landfills, sewage, and other organic waste products. In addition to being toxic in high concentrations, high-ammonia runoff can upset the equilibrium of natural water features leading to algae blooms, fish kills, and other far-reaching effects.

This plant was able to successfully treat high ammonia landfill leachate, in addition to the wastewater already being treated. All it took for them to achieve success was support from BiOWiSH. BiOWiSH experts recommended BiOWiSH^® Aqua, our bioaugmentation solution for the natural treatment of waste and surface water. Our experts also helped the plant make a few simple process modifications to increase plant efficacy.

By the end of the trial, BiOWiSH^® Aqua delivered stable total nitrogen levels in plant effluent.

 

With the help of BiOWiSH^® Aqua, this wastewater treatment plant was able to help clean up the environment by processing high ammonia leachate from a nearby landfill and maintain effluent compliance at the same time.

How Our Biological Nitrogen Removal Works

BiOWiSH^® Aqua is powered by our proprietary microbial technology. BiOWiSH^® microorganisms have a unique ability to rapidly reduce nitrogen loading using a variety of microbial pathways. While other biological solutions may remove nitrogen under very specific circumstances, BiOWiSH^® Aqua works under a broad range of conditions, both aerobically and anaerobically.

Because BiOWiSH^® is 100% natural, it is a safe and non-toxic way to enhance water treatment operations like this one.

This water treatment plant is not alone – water treatment professionals around the world are using BiOWiSH^® Aqua to improve their effluent quality, meet regulations fast, and remove nitrogen. See the table below for a summary of results or view our water treatment case studies and research studies here.